Posts Tagged ‘cessna 182’

Rinker Buck and his brother Kernahan flew from New Jersey to California in a Piper Cub in 1966. Kernahan, the pilot in command, was 17 and Rinker was 15—and the trip was done with their parents’ full consent. (And flown solely by pilotage and dead reckoning—Rinker’s job was to be the navigator.) Rinker Buck’s memoir, Flight of Passage,has become available in eBook format. I talked with him yesterday for an interview that will appear in the August issue of Flight Training magazine, but here are some extras from that very interesting conversation:

He doesn’t consider Flight of Passage an aviation book. “I consider it a memoir in the truer sense. It’s about life.”

He was surprised when people wrote to tell him the book inspired them. “The biggest surprise of the book was getting emails from people saying ‘I’m so inspired by this, I’m going to learn to fly, I’m going to go take a flight.'” Many current pilots told him the book inspired them to make a coast-to-coast trip–and several did, including a pilot from Rhode Island who conducted the trip in an L-19.

He and his brother are still flying, but not as much. Buck has been busy working on his latest book, which chronicles a trip by horse-drawn wagon over the Oregon Trail, but says that he still enjoys flying with friends. Kernahan is an attorney whose Boston practice keeps him busy.

When researching Flight of Passage, he re-flew most of the routes in a Cessna 182. “It was amazing that I just remembered our old routes, that’s why the book could be so accurate in terms of landscapes.” The brothers landed at 30 airports. “Twenty-seven of them are still there and they look exactly the same.”

He thinks you need to read Stick and Rudder, if you haven’t already. “The principles have not changed. You might be flying along in a Cirrus with a glass cockpit but it’s all still subject to all the same laws that [Wolfgang] Langewiesche wrote about.”

A Cessna 182 is sitting in the Cessna Aircraft exhibit space at Oshkosh, waiting for the Monday opening of EAA AirVenture 2012 and it is not all that mysterious. First of all, it says “Turbo” in bold black letters on the aircraft. So it is a turbo something. After that, experts in the installation of diesel engines say it is obviously an SMA diesel engine that will now be offered in Cessna 182s. However, we won’t know for sure until the masking tape and paper masks come off Monday. So act surprised, OK?

Even when the new tunnel under the Gibraltar runway is completed, pedestrians and emergency vehicles will continue to stop air traffic and use Winston Churchill Avenue above ground to cross it. In the past it could take 10 minutes to clear people and traffic off the runway so an aircraft could land. The tunnel will be an improvement. This shot was taken by world traveler Robert Gannon after landing in his Cessna 182, and those tiny dots on the runway are traffic and people. The Gibraltar Airport is 1,600 feet from the city, the shortest commute of any major airport in the world. CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

Rumor has it that Saddam Hussein had nearly 100 Boeing 747s, but right before the war he dispersed them to neighboring countries including six to Tunisia. World traveler Robert Gannon found two of them at the airport in Tozeur, Tunisia, tires flat. He parked his trusty Cessna 182 called Lucky Lady Too between them for a tourist shot. Gannon moves his 182 from place to place until duties call him home, and then returns to continue his adventure. CLICK PHOTO